adamsgi

Valentines day is really for single people to let other single people know how they feel. Myself and my partner don't do anything on Valentines day, because it is expected. It's easy to be all romantic on one prescribed day of the year. It's much more difficult to do it all year round. Also, if you do get the flowers etc on Valentines day, I feeli it demeans the emotion behind it. So instead of celebrating Valentines day, why not get the flowers, chocolate etc on the 12th Feb and then say to the one you love that you didn't want them to think you had only got them because it was Valentines day and it was expected of you. Make sense?

There is no need to seek impatiently for greatness, fame or wealth. The Earth and the Sun do not hurry; they follow their own path at their own pace. If the Earth were to accelerate and complete one rotation in three hours instead of twenty four, we would be in big trouble! The most important thing in life, too, is to find a sure and certain path and confidently advance along it.Daisaku Ikeda

I was a huge fan of the Text adventure games in the 80s, and really that is where I got the programming bug from (I used to program simple ones in Spectrum and C64 Basic - lots of poking and peeking lol)Does anyone remember Erik the Viking on the Commodore 64? Did anyone ever complete it? It was one of the more complex ones using verbs such as "launch" when you have been trying all day to push, pull, shove, nudge, and kcik the ship into submission...It definitely had to be my favourite. Anyone else have a good one?

I first learnt HTML in 1998 when I wanted to do a personal webpage (back in the days when I and my friends thought that everyone actually wanted to read about us and our interests....)I started by using a book and typing the HTML into notepad. Infact I still do that to this day. I prefer to do that rather than use Frontpage or Nvu etc. I feel like I have accomplished more by doing it myself, and it makes sure that I don't forget any of it. I eventually added some javascript (little messages in the status bar, alerts and onmouseover effects) and left it at that. Then when I decided to set up my own business, I realised that the little I did know wasn't going to be enough. I needed to know php for form-to-email and database control. I also looked at perl for counters and password protection (although I now incorprate this into the php and databases).I have always found that the best incentive to learn is need. If I didn't need to learn all of this, I probably wouldn't have bothered.

I am having exactly the same problem. "Page cannot be displayed".Any suggestions anyone?

.tk websites are fine if you do have regular hits on your website. I lost my site because i didn't reach the 90 hits (I was 2 short). However, apart from that I found the service to be rather good. I already have the .com and .co.uk for my business website, but wanted some others that had already been registered (e.g. nhspayroll.com) Makes it easier to have nhspayroll.tk. By the way, for those who do not know, Tokelau is an island in the pacific ocean.Once I have been able to log into cpanel (it's not working at the moment) I will be moving my website over, but at the moment I have it with freehosting.hostrave.com. not bad, but no cgi.http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

One problem I have is that so many politicians believe that war can bring about peace. I think that everyone can see that if that was the case, the 1st world war would have been the end of it. Unfortunately, fighting a war for peace, is like having sex for virginity - completely counteractive. War (and violence in general) just breads more war and violence.An overly simplified example: Take the Middle East situation. Saddam Hussein was scared of the nuclear power that his western enemies had and so tried to get some of his own. This fear of violence resulted in fear in the west, that Saddam might use wmd's if he could get his hands on any. We eventually went to war with him, and his country. This in turn created a lot of bad feeling in the Middle east, which may have resulted in the al-qaeda Terrorist attacks in the US, Spain, and Indonesia. Because of these attacks, we fought back and invaded their countries, determined to impose a new regime, completely unsuitable for that area of the world. Now hate us, and are resulting to suicide bombing to get their way. We in turn are hunting the suicide bombers, but annoy the local innocent citzens in the process, creating enough bad feeling to foster even more suicide bombers. And so the saga goes on in an ever perpetuating circle.The key thing is for one side to stop. To bring it to something closer to home (I'm in the UK), Northern Ireland has been a bone of contention for many years. If one side had just stopped the violence, the other side would have lost favour if they had continued the violence. *BLEEP* for tat fighting is no answer, and in the end, everyone really forgets what they are fighting for. All they know is that it has always been that way.However, money and power are always attractive things. Unfortunately, when it comes to war, they never last for long.

With respect to the lovely place of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobyllllantysiliogogogoch, it isn't actually the longest place name in Wales any more. That honour belongs to... wait for it... Gorsafawddacha'idraigodanheddogleddollonpenrhynareurdraethceredigion which translates as "The Mawddach station and its dragon teeth at the Northern Penrhyn Road on the golden beach of Cardigan Bay" It was 'constructed' deliberately to beat the previous place. Hmmm...... I wonder....... No!! the gorsafawddacha website is still available! However...... Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu This Maori mouthful translates into English as "the place where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, who slid, climbed and swallowed mountains, known as 'landeater,' played his flute to his loved one." and.... Krungthepmahanakonbowornratanakosinmahintarayudyayamahadiloponoparatana rajthaniburiromudomrajniwesmahasatarnamornpimarnavatarsatitsakattiyavisanukam phrasit The favorite of the Guinness Book of Records, the name of Bangkok (Krungthep) in Thai: Personally, I think Bangkok is better......

One of the big cons about the Catholic Church is the idea of confession. The premise that a priest can absolve you of your sins by giving you a couple of our fathers and hail mary's is absurd. Especially when those sins can be (oftentimes) illegal in nature. There is a bone of contention that within Christianity is the teaching that if one truly repents of his sins, no matter how grave they are, God will forgive those sins and s/he will gain entry into heaven. This confession/absolution cycle means that you can go and kill someone, confess to your priest, he absolves you of any sin and then you can go out and do it again. Maybe this is why there are so many paedophiles in the catholic church.If I have offended anyone I do apologise. It is not my intention, but an unfortunate by-product of topics such as this one.On the pro side, Catholicism gives a lot of people a lot of strength. Whatever gets you through the day, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else.

I think that is an exaggeration! Of course, fatter people would appear to have smaller penises in proportion to the rest of their body. It would be like a 40 yo guy having a 32 inch waistline, and a 2yo kid having the same. The size is the same, but in proprtion to the rest of the body, it makes a huge difference. Back on topic however, and the latest studies show that people who are slightly overweight live longer than gym-toned athletes. Nothing about 50 stone blobs living to 120. One of the suspected reasons behind this is that people who are slightly overweight don't deny themselves life's pleasures and so don't get so stressed about staying thin! Glad to be slightly overweight. Might not be as big as yours but I get to use it for longer.

Let's get the thread back on topic. It is arrogant to think that we are the only intelligent living beings in this Universe. This self-importance is borne out of religions, and mainly the Judeo-Christian-Islam traditions. But enough bashing of Christianity. They have their views, which they quite obviously think the highest both morally and spiritually. And after all, that is their prerogative. I personally am a Buddhist, which I consider to be a hundred-fold more moral than Christianity. Quite clearly in the Lotus Sutra (one of the last teachings the Buddha expounded) he states that he has been teaching Buddhism since time without beginning (via past lives etc) and that when he isn't here, he is somewhere else in the universe. Buddhism and Hinduism both believe in life on other planets. The Dogon - a tribe from Mali in Africa - have baffled scientists: (Apologies for the long quote - sounds to me a lot like ET-Christianity, however, note the 5000 year history - predating most of the Bible) The argument earlier that people wouldn't believe in aliens if it wasn't in the media is obviously flawed when you look into ancient mythology and cultures. You will find that the majority of ancient cultures believe in extraterrestrials. If God made the universe just for us, why did he create it so big? Of course no one can answer that, apart from the stock answer "Because he did/could" And one last thing. If God gave people free will, why does he punish you if you do the wrong thing? That is either blackmail and/or coercion, not free will.

Sorry to harp on about the gay thing again...Jesus did not at any stage say to keep the laws about homosexuality. Basically, the ten commandments were pronounced so that people would not have to live by the very restrictive, voluminous laws in Leviticus (almost all of which come from Zoroastrian texts and have been speculated by certain scholars to have been written by a Persian King as a moral guide for the various tribes).It cannot be right for people to pick and choose which ones should still apply. If Jesus and therefore God had meant for any in particular laws to remain, they would have been outlined in more detail.As for people mentioning the anti-gay verses in Romans, etc. These were written by Paul/Saul and in the early days of Christianity, Pauline Christianity differed quite a lot from the original Church of Jersalem, which was headed up by James, Jesus' brother. Unfortunately, before the Romans adopted Christianity as the Empire's religion (and again changed it even further) they went to Jerusalem and killed pretty much every member of the original Church.Many of the inconsistencies between the varying denominations of Christianity come from the inconsistencies of Paul.So the crux of it is, if you can't be gay, then you can't eat pork, must observe the sabbath (which is actually Saturday, not Sunday) and all males must be circumcised (a practice that is losing popularity amongst Christian groups).**adamsgi waits for the barrage**

Not exactly. I didn't say I wouldn't defend myself - there are many ways one can do that without having to resort to stabbing/shooting/killing someone. As a Buddhist and therefore living according to a non-violent philosophy, I would not kill someone intentionally. If I pushed the 6'7" drug addict out of the way and he fell on his knife and died, then there is nothing I could do about it. If anything I would probably call an ambulance and try and help him until it arrived. And before anyone says "it's easy to say that, wait until it happens".... In June 1997, I was walking home from work and saw a girl I knew. I went up to her and said hello. Her boyfriend came out of a shop and invited me back to theirs for a drink. I didn't really want to, but thought it would be rude to say no, so I said I would stop by for one. As the time went on, She apparently spoke to him like a piece of dirt (I didn't hear what she said, but it must have been bad) and because she was female, he "couldn't take it out on her", so he took it out on me instead. During the 5 hour assault that I underwent, in which he kicked me in the face (breaking my nose several times) and holding a bread knife to my throat (which left a serated line across my throat), he constantly wanted me to hit him. I refused. I did nothing at all to provoke him further. I don't remember how it happened exactly, but I managed to get out and went to the hospital. The key thing in that experience I learned was that if I had hit him back, he would have killed me. In fact I found out from the girl (who subsequently dumped this guy) that 5 minutes after I left, he came looking for me with the bread knife intending to kill me. I firmly believe that it was because I stayed calm, and didn't provoke the situation, that the opportunity to leave came before it was too late. So in the case of the drug addict. What if I did have a gun. What if I shot him. But what if it didn't kill him, and instead he stabbed me to death out of anger, when all he wanted to do in the first place was scare me into handing over my wallet?

Either that or we will all be pledging our allegiance to our new overlord.What with the following additions to the States of America:51st - Afghanistan52nd - IraqWhat's the betting for the 53rd?1. Syria (US is telling them to get out of Lebanon)2. Iran (row over plutonium)3. North Korea (Kim Jong Il and his nuclear missile)Who knows, maybe we will be lucky and the asteroid will save us from this fate worse than bush.

JGuy, I am well aware of the crime rate in the UK, being British, and living near Manchester.... I think you lost my point, in that regardless of whether I was allowed to own a gun, I still could not legally use it to "defend" myself. Quite frankly, anyone who shoots someone should have to deal with the consequences. Killing people should never be justified - and you can never guarantee that you will not kill someone if you shoot them. Until we can deal with the social problems that cause gun-related crime (drugs, greed, isolation etc) there will always be someone using one to get what they want. But there is the supposed argument that if the homeowner has a gun it may deter people from robbing their houses. This argument is flawed because if it was the case, there would be hardly any robbery in the US, whether armed or not. And having a gun to protect yourself is pretty pointless if you have already been shot dead. You also say that 12% of guns used in crime are bought legally. Get rid of legal gun ownership and you will have technically reduced your gun crime by 12%. Any government would love to be able to do that. One of the major problems that the world faces today is that less and less people are valuing human life. Some dregs of society think nothing of killing another person. Is this due to desensitisation by the media, or just a general decline in morals? Or is it because we are descending into an animalistic hell where only the ruthless mobs will survive? (Sorry for being a 'tad' dramatic )

Very nice answer ken!For me, the meaning of life is to progress. To go forward. To do whatever brings meaning into your life and to continue doing it. If it means everything to you to raise healthy intelligent and respectable children, do it, and then on your death bed you will be happy with your life. If it means everything to you to give money to beggars, then do it.Never have any regrets. Never feel guilty. Do what you think is right, and as long as it harms no-one else, you will live a good life, and die a happy person.(However, you do have to remember that you are going to die one day - running from that fact will only make you miserable.)

I believe you are confusing who you are sexually attracted to and who you have intercourse with. There is much more to being gay than (in my case) having sex with another man. I could make myself have sex with a woman, but I would still be gay, just as you could make yourself have sex with a member of the same sex and still be straight. Does this mean that celibate people are asexual and do not find anyone sexually attractive? Wouldn't this then go against God's wishes? If that is the case then there should be lots of sex before marriage otherwise how will anyone know that they are attracted to the opposite sex? Oh sorry, I forgot, that's the "normal" way to be. As a good friend of mine says...

While this subject of Gender swapping is up, I am proud to announce that from 1st April, the UK is going to officially recognise the new gender of Post-Op Transsexuals. They will be given a legal certificate which means they can get married as their new gender and it will also be illegal to discriminate against them.1 more step forward to open-minded Britain - and it's a much better place for it.

Any other Brits thinking of the Boomtown Rats whilst reading this thread???The Silicon chip inside her head... As a watcher of Star Trek (I wouldn't go SO far as to say a fan) I keep thinking of the Neural Gel packs. I'm guessing these are based on a similar idea.

People who chant to Amitabha Buddha are Pure Land Buddhists. They believe in rebirth in a western land where there will be no suffering, and so they will be able to attain Buddhahood (enlightenment) without hindrance. They chant the phrase Nam-amida-butsu (Devotion to Amitabha Buddha)Nichiren Buddhists chant "Nam-myoho-renge-kyo" (Devotion to the Mystic Law of the Lotus Sutra) which enables one to experience Buddhahood in this existance through dealing with life as it is - real life.Nichiren was initially a monk in the Tendai (T'ien T'ai) sect in Japan, and this is where he studied all the available teachings and arrived at the same conclusion as the other Tendai priests - that the Lotus Sutra was the highest Buddhist teaching and all the others were provisional teachings, expounded according to the capacity of the people who were listening. One of the differences about the Lotus Sutra compared to the other sutras (teachings) is that most of the others were in response to a specific question e.g. How do I lessen my karma? How should I sit? etc. In the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha starts by revealing that he has never taught the Great Law. The people gathered beg him to teach it and so he responds. The Lotus Sutra is one of the most influential of Buddhist Sutras.There is also the Ritsu and Shingon (apologies for only knowing the Japanese names) schools which are more esoteric and believe in secret and almost magical mantras and mudras (hand signs), as well as several schools of Zen (Chan in China). Then as Majestic Tree Frog said, there is Tibetan Buddhism (4 different schools), and several different forms of Theravada Buddhism.Buddhism is as "fractured" as Christianity, however, there is one big different between Buddhism and other religions. The Buddha distinctly refuted the fact that he was "divine". He told people not to worship him (although people being people, some took no notice) and told them not to believe in his teachings until they had tried them out. The proof of Buddhism is in the doing. It's a challenge I took and found that it was correct.

Coming from the UK, where you cannot protect yourself with guns (it is illegal) I don't see a problem with gun control. I must admit, the latest events in Minnesota show a perfect argument for why there should be tighter gun control in the US.What it comes down to is that Guns don't kill people, the people who use them do. You have a catch 22 situation in the US - anyone can own a gun, which makes gun crime much easier. This means people want guns to protect themselves, and so guns become even easier to obtain, and so gun crime is bound to increase.How would you feel if the gun you had kept in your house to protect your family was taken by your child to kill someone who was bullying them? Who would be responsible then? You, your child, the bully.....Gun crime is on the increase in the UK, mainly due to the illegal gun trading that goes on. However, much of this behaviour seems to have been "imported" from the US, with British kids forming clans and giving themselves "Gansta" names, emulating the rap culture.It's a shame that people feel the need for guns, but until crime is tackled, people will try to justify that need.

Many apologies, MTF.... (unless I subconsciously meant the J to stand for jnana.... Majestic Jnana Frog. Hmmmm....)

I'd first like to point out that I don't deliberately go around looking for posts that MJF has commented on and agree with his sentiments, it just seems to happen that way! I wish people could get their head around the fact that being gay is not contagious, and is not something you can choose to be. If it is, then every single person in the world could choose to be gay. Not only that, by using the contagious argument, everyone in the world would have caught "gayness" as approximately 1 10th of the worlds population is gay. It always has been and always will be. Get used to it. I can understand how people get sick of having "gayness" shoved int their faces. I am gay and even I get sick of it. However, I don't see any threads in here complaining about women's rights campaigns destroying society (as they would have done forty or fifty years ago. Someone in here wrote that gay people cause the prejudice by always pushing their cause. The fact is, if we were treated equally (i.e. with the same respect that every heterosexual person receives) we wouldn't have anything to argue about, and the whole problem would stop. As for this pathetic argument that gay marriage is like taking drugs, I cannot get the analogy. Gay marriage will not hurt anyone. It will not damage the sanctity of marriage - pre-nups and divorce already do that. It wasn't until the Industrial Revolution that people married for love. Instead they got married for convenience, and to pass on the family line. They then went out and had sex with other people for fun. Marriage had little to do with love. I also refer you to a book called "The Marriage of Likeness: Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe" ISBN: 0006863264. For ease, I have quoted the customer review from Amazon below. I suggest that people actually research subjects before denouncing them. It does make people look very small minded. Sorry if I have offended anyone, but quite frankly some of your posts have offended me.

Well I don't feel isolated by that comment! I, like MJF, am a Buddhist, however I am a completely different type of Buddhist. Where he is Theravada (or Hinayana, depending on who you are speaking to), the teachings I follow are part of the Mahayana group of Buddhist schools. In particular, the school of Buddhism founded by Nichiren, a 13th century Buddhist monk, who studied all of the sutras (Buddhist teachings) that were available to him and discovered that the Lotus Sutra was the highest of all Buddhist teachings. Simply put, there is no God in Buddhism. There are stories of several gods, however, these are seen more as metaphors to aid belief - termed "expedient means". The whole of Buddhism is really about enabling people to see the true nature of reality, which includes both life and death. As a Buddhist I take 100% responsibility for all of my actions, believing that in order to change my life, I have to change myself. Nothing happens to you that you cannot deal with, and if anything, everything that happens to you is perfect for you to use as a means to become a better human being. We chant, like MJF described, however, unlike the Pure Land school, who pray to be reborn in a perfect land in the West, where they will be able to attain enlightenment with no bad distractions, Nichiren Buddhists have realised that if there are no bad distractions in life, you will not be able to see the whole nature of reality and so will be unable to attain enlightenment. Therefore, this life is where we attain Buddhahood. Buddhahood or enlightenment is (in brief) becoming aware of the essence of life, nature and the universe, being able to see how your actions and reactions ripple out to affect your environment, being in charge of your emotions, and not over-run by them, and all the while having your feet firmly planted in this reality. It's not about becoming some serene person who is completely detached from everything else. It's about becoming a human being full of wisdom, knowledge and compassion. If you have any further questions, please ask - Buddhism can be quite complicated to explain sometimes - tangents are quite common in conversation.

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. John 1:14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. What John is saying is that Jesus is not only human. He is a manifestation of God (i.e. God made flesh) So where is the overwhelmingly selfless compassion that we have heard so much about? That sentiment seems quite selfish for someone who is fulfilling their destiny. As for how I'd feel, I am not proclaiming to be the Only Begotten Son of God. My destiny is to die, not for the sins of everyone, but according to my own karma.